Posted
by
ScuttleMonkey
on Monday March 23, 2009 @04:16PM
from the and-i'm-sure-it-will-be-bug-and-bloat-free dept.

An anonymous reader writes "Microsoft, inspired perhaps by the ease of selecting and installing iPhone apps, has taken a similar approach to gather back market share of its IIS web server in a predominantly Apache/PHP market. 10 open source CMS, gallery, wiki, and blog tools were chosen to populate the eco-system, dubbed Web App Gallery. Developers must agree to principles and can now submit their PHP or .NET application for inclusion. Once an application is in the gallery, Windows users use Microsoft Web Platform Installer, released in a keynote at MIX this week, which inspects the the local system, and installs and configures dependencies like the IIS webserver, PHP, URL re-writers, and file permissions. Screenshots show this to be quite easy for the typical computer user. This could provide some real competition for WAMP and Linux shell install processes."

You think this is a sign Microsoft is legitimately trying to reach out to the web community? Or is this just another attempt to grab server market share from Apache and the Linux community?

Um.. what's the difference? One thing I can promise you is that Microsoft, like any other company, does what it feels is in its best interest. ie, they aren't trying to do anyone a favor here, they're trying to make more money.

I guess the difference would be their target audience. Are they targeting some random joe who wants to setup a wordpress blog? Or are they targeting server administrator who would be making the decisions about what software to use?

I'm inclined to think that they want to put IIS (and ASP.NET) in front of as many casual Windows-based web developers as possible. Of course with both WAMP and XAMPP taking about three minutes to install I'm not sure that will work - especially since a number of PHP web apps require some odd hacks to get them to work under IIS.

In order to be "deployable" under these settings, new developers will have to use the same hacks and/or workarounds, and could well forget to address how the standard behavior will act on *AMP servers, theoretically creating a bunch of new PHP web apps that will only deploy properly on PHP/IIS servers.

Of course, the number of hosts that are offering PHP/IIS rather than *AMP is absolutely miniscule, so these apps catching on (if this is the case) is slim to none.

Part of me thinks that it's more a ploy to get.NET in front of PHP developers, trying to sell them on the "look at all of this premade, drag-and-drop functionality" thing, but I doubt that will make a difference. Devs that need what.NET offers are going to already be using IIS setups and PHP devs will probably ignore it due to the relatively steep learning curve (or just being forced to work in Visual Studio unless you want to memorize an entire framework).

So... I have no idea. If my cynicism is correct, then I see what they're trying to do but don't see it working that well. If not, then your guess is as good as mine.

Of course with both WAMP and XAMPP taking about three minutes to install I'm not sure that will work

Ah but it will, Microsoft developers don't tend to look outside the box to see if there's anything else out there - they generally assume that MS provides all they would ever need, and if MS doesn't provide it, its either not available at all, or they never needed it anyway.

This is why this will succeed, the MS blogs and communities will pick up on it and suddenly they'll think its the best thing ever. I doubt they'll actually use much PHP, that's just the teaser to pre-populate the site with apps, they'll all get taken over with ASP.NET MVC stuff before too long -the MS crowd just don't like to install 'foreign' stuff like PHP when they will think nothing of installing over a gig of.net framework to start playing with C#.

Has it ever struck anyone else that aside from a mediocre Update center Microsofts software delivery mechanism is archaic, almost fundamentally useless? If this level of innovation wasn't systemic throughout our industry (and many others) they would have been laughed out of business a long time ago.

The redistributables are not exactly a gig - though I always think like that because they are huge (I have to download the full ones to install on my customer's site as they're not connected to the internet)

I'm not even sure it's that big... the "all these RPMs in a ZIP" archive of the Mono 2.2 runtime for RedHad is around 40MB.

Actually, I just checked, the.NET 2.0 runtime for XP is a 22MB download.

IMHO (and I'm sure this will earn me some/. flames).NET and C# are a couple of the best things to come out of MS. And I'm quite happy about being able to use them on my Mac (via Mono) when the need arises (and it does, 'cause I do C#/.NET stuff in my day job).

Doing someone a favour and trying to make more money aren't mutually exclusive; in fact, it can be clever business practice. By doing so, you can improve the perception of your company, the better perception results in people being more likely to buy products and services from you, and you've done it all without doing something unethical or illegal.

Frankly, I'd much rather Microsoft did stuff like the above, making their products easier to use, especially with 3rd-party products, than just being plain ar

You'll notice, "free" applies to other people's software. Microsoft, ever infinitely gracious, deigns to allow you to give your software away so that they can sell more of theirs.

Nobody should be surprised by a move like this. Web applications, CMSes and the like, are complementary goods to web servers and OSes. Everybody wants goods complementary to their own products to be cheaper, so as to drive demand. This isn't some sort of philosophical revolution, just Econ 101 + self interest on MS's part.

Or is this just another attempt to grab server market share from Apache and the Linux community?

This is MS trying to show everyone they can play in the "cloud" with the cool kids. It's the Zune for SAS.

Back in the day MS came out with Explorer and hosed Netscape. Seems like ever since they wait for the trend to establish itself and then come in with a competing product trying to recreate that market capture moment from years ago. Only they show up late with products that are usually tied to their OS platform and maybe a little dorky.

Microsoft trying to be hip and trendy sometimes reminds me of a middle-aged guy hitting on his daughters college-age friends.

Explorer never hosed Netscape, it doesn't compete in any way with any Netscape product that ever existed. Internet Explorer on the other hand drove Navigator into the ground and they are still recovering from that.

Honestly, if their agreement made it so they would host projects for Apache as well, I'd totally jump onboard. I mean after all, sourceforge hosts projects for Windows and IIS. Why does Microsoft segregate? If they are talking about embracing open source, they can't sit here picking and choosing. They need to embrace or STFU already. You can't be kinda pregnant.

Trying to attribute 'human' values, even malice, to a company is like dressing your poodle. 'Microsoft' has no intent, only individuals have intent. What they do have is a large, constantly changing body of managers along with a history of cut-throat business policies and more often then not, sub-par products.

PHPNuke and other CMS'es or weblog thingies like Wordpress made it simple to create websites for the masses of people that just wanted something simple to host their website. Of course, they never kept up with any of the updates or didn't even give a hoot about security. Next thing you know you have a bunch of websites that are cracked and now serve ads and malware.

...and I think the others are usually a lot easier to install. Microsoft's takes at least 5 steps (with steps like 1. "Download, Configure, Install MySQL").

Meanwhile, on many other systems, it is a lot less work:Ubuntu:1. In the Programs menu, click "Add/Remove"2. Select the CMS (or whatever) that you want, and click "Install"3. Enjoy.

Other debian systems:1. apt-get install my-favourite-cms

Freebsd:1. cd/usr/ports/www/my-favourite-cms; make install

And finally, a quick comparison between this new Microsoft way and the usual ways with GNU Linux/BSD:Installing is easier with GNU Linux/BSDConfiguration is easier with GNU Linux/BSDSupport is generally more available with GNU Linux/BSDWriting plugins is generally a whole lot easier with GNU Linux/BSD because the code is available

Especially with the new tools available, I believe IIS deserves to die.

It isn't apache (the webserver) that provides the comfort you describe. The package managing system is. So why should IIS (the webserver) die?Someone should provide a package managing system to enable the comfort for IIS. Oh, look at that, the summary says Microsoft is doing that.

"Microsoft, inspired[1] perhaps by the ease of selecting and installing iPhone apps, has taken a similar approach to gather back market share of its IIS web server in a predominantly Apache/PHP market. 10 open source[2] CMS, gallery, wiki, and blog tools were chosen to populate the eco-system, dubbed Web App Gallery.

[1] I think submitter mis-spelled "feeling threatened".

[2] Big deal. Two open source tools? How many closed-source tools are in the "ecosystem"?

Big deal. Two open source tools? How many closed-source tools are in the "ecosystem"?

Open Source != Good. Closed Source != Bad. Just as open source and bad are not mutually exclusive, closed source and good are not mutually exclusive, regardless of what Stallman thinks. I have used quite a few closed source programs that I like quite a bit, and quite a few open source programs that were plain awful. And vice versa. The idea that in order to be a Good Thing (tm) it has to be Open Source (tm) is a Weird Thing (tm).

This is probably tangental; but Stallman takes no position on the quality of proprietary or free software programs. His position is strictly concerned with the ethics and implications for freedom of the two.

It is the business side guys, the ones who talk about "open source" who advance the argument that the development model produces better, as opposed to freer or more ethical, software

You don't have to agree with him; but you should, in that case, at least disagree with him rather than somebody else entirely.

True, but "good" and "bad" do not necessarily only refer to quality. I think a lot of knee-jerk (which, in this case, apparently was a joke that I missed:) ) reactions of "Microsoft! Closed source! Lynch them!" come from more the "ethical" side than the business side... the sort of "I think Linux is the end-all operating system" mentality. Not to say someone usually comes out and says it like that, but there does appear to be that stance taken when non-Linux (or more generally, anything-related-to-Wind

Servers are maintained by people who are not computer newbies and need a GUI. Normally they know how to handle a shell.Extremely ease install routines for server applications suggest that maintaining a server and keeping it secure is a trivial task, just like clicking those shiny "install" buttons. This is not the case, and you better know how to keep your server save if you run it on the web, especially if you make the somewhat disturbing choice to run it under Windows.

Um.... servers are so damned complicated because they are entirely customizable (kinda like Linux, but running Windows). Servers and server software have never been marketed to the general public, only to IT nerds who actually know how to customize it to what they need it to do. Thus, servers aren't made to be easy, nor can they be easy.

I guess cars should be as easy to fix as building a car out of Lego. Anything less and it's the automotive people protecting mechanic's jobs.

By making things easier means you're pushing all the technical knowledge on fewer people (ie the ones building the system) and when it all falls apart you have to rely on the smaller group of people to fix it and by doing so protects a limited set of jobs even more while leaving servers more vulnerable all because some tit thinks he should be able to run a server wi

Real administrators don't use package managers, either. Real administrators know how to handle compiling from source for anything they want to install and spending two hours configuring it for their system.

Real Linux users don't use silly things like synaptic and apt-get and other such command line tools. Real Linux users use wget to get a tarball and compile from source, editing menus in gnome or kde by themselves (if they ever use gnome or kde, most of the time Real Linux Users just use lynx).

Sigh. This isn't for servers. This is for developers. You know, the people who develop that which is eventually deployed to your precious servers, without which those servers would be useless â" as servers tend to require something to, you know, SERVE.

Jesus. Server administrators should be happy about this. Let Joe Developer hack away at his Wordpress install on his local machine, rather than bugging you right away to install it on the server.

Just because something CAN be done doesn't mean it SHOULD be. I've seen a.NET product forced to run on a Linux server too. Yes, it worked (by and large). Was the amount of time wasted on both sides of the project far, far more than the cost of buying a copy of Windows Server? You bet.

Right tools for the right job. Yes, I could use a clawhead hammer to screw in a screw if I absolutely had to, but like hell am I going to waste my time trying when I could just go out and spend $3 on a screwdriver.

Running a server requires some technical knowhow. The more you attempt to "dumb it down" the higher chances you have with someone who really doesn't know what they are doing to admin a server. This is a bad thing for a few reasons, A) A GUI or any other "helper" program makes your server more insecure, a simple command line install running only Apache and a firewall is going to have less security holes by default then the person running Apache, a Firewall all under X and KDE. B) It is very, very, very, easy to socially engineer GUI attacks. On the other hand, its a lot harder on a command line because most of the documentation is standardized. C) If you don't even know what you are doing, how are you securing your box? If someone can't understand a command line, how are they possibly going to understand the complexities in making a server reasonably secure?

The overworked IT guy should know how to run a server using the command line if one of his principle duties is running a server. A command line is no slower than a GUI (its faster in most cases) to someone who knows how to use it. If you hire someone to run a server, they better know what they are doing.

I suspect MS will do something dastardly, like customizing the various CMS systems they use to use MS SQL when they did not do so previously, with different table and row names within the database, providing no ways for your an average user to export the data into any other format than MS SQL.

Sure, it's workable, but for someone who doesn't know how to install things manually - never mind what was installed in the first place? Good luck. He's locked in and stuck using IIS on Windows, now.

The reason why Microsoft is giving support to open source applications is not because it wishes to support open source.

It is because it fears the open source operating system more than anything else. It imagines that if they welcome open source application developers onto the Microsoft platform they will be able to undermine support for the rival operating system (Linux).

If and when the rival operating system fades into disuse, those open source application developers will find that the Microsoft embrace ca

Microsoft, inspired perhaps by the ease of selecting and installing iPhone apps

Yup. Cuz nobody's every thought about a package manager before. Especially not one with a nice, GUI front end.

Hey, maybe Microsoft will adopt something similar for the Xbox 360. You know, to make it easier to download add-ons, small games, videos, and so on. They could call it, I don't know, Xbox Live Marketplace or something. Too bad it's too late for them to have done it for the Xbox. Real shame that.

this is mostly to get third party stuff and the dev tools. If the goal is just to get a web dev environment setup period, then it IS pretty much that simple in Windows too, as its preinstalled, its just not activated. You go in the Add/Remove programs, click IIS and ASP.NET, and thats pretty much it. You're missing the database (but for something simplistic, Jet is built in...otherwise you just get SQL Server Express with a next next next finish wizard).

Disclaimer: I work for http://acquia.com/ [acquia.com] , and we provide commercial support and network services for the open-source Drupal CMS.
Over several weeks, we worked with Microsoft to make sure Drupal would be well represented in the Windows Application Gallery to provide IIS users access to an easy to use Drupal installation. The result is here http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/AcquiaDrupal.aspx [microsoft.com]
We already provide Drupal Windows and Mac stack installers for Apache at http://acquia.com/downloads [acquia.com] and so thi

Most of those apps use mysql on the backend (at least WP and Drupal do... and those are two of the main apps touted). BUT! The platform only mentions SQL Server as far as I've read so far. Is MySQL quietly installed or is this some port of those apps that uses SQL Server? Some DB Abstraction Layer (find that hard to believe)?

Mod me down for not reading enough or being lazy if you want, but I an still trying to figure out how they include

This could provide some real competition for WAMP and Linux shell install processes.

sudo apt-get install wordpress

Oooooh yeah, that *was* difficult!

Also, this isn't Microsoft copying Apple as much as it's copying Fantastico [netenberg.com]. Fantastico (when combined with cPanel) has had the "point and click to install your web app" thing down for year. Proprietary, yes. Buggy, yes. But it works and is a standard feature on any decent commercial Linux webhosting account.

But you have to remember that these people would have to look up this command on the Web.
And since they are primarily using IE, their computer is usually hosed, so they can't get to the web to look for the information.
That's why they have all these point and clicky things in their servers and support phone lines that charge by the hour.

But for right now, I'm still ahead of the curve, I support Linux servers and only linux servers. Those guys working on MS servers work to hard and know less about what

SilverStripe, one of the PHP/MySQL applications included in Microsoft's Web Application gallery, gets 40% of its installs on Windows currently. So, to streamline those installs makes a good set of sense, especially as a high number of those would be purely for evaluation purposes, where the focus is to get a copy quickly running with all the correct dependencies sorted.
http://silverstripe.org/silverstripe-installation-trends-march2009/ [silverstripe.org]

I understand exactly what is the target audience for this. Let me give you a concrete example that happened to me recently. I am now working in China, and most Chinese IT guys I know here are MS-only guys who think the whole world revolves around MS products and nothing else exists, sadly it is a reality here (go try to find a Linux netbook in Shanghai - good luck). However, lately a sister school asked me to help their IT guys to install Moodle on their school's server (we run it on a Debian system), but T

"Be Compatible: The application to which you provide a link must run on Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Windows XP & Windows Vista using best practices on running ASP.NET applications and PHP applications on IIS."

They run faster and you shouldn't run services on a desktop machine anyways if you worry about slowness. Put linux on an old computer, setup the LAMP, and there you go. Samba will allow you to access the files directly and you can even use the old computer as a dedicated server. No need to purchase Windows 2k3 or 2k8.